Parenting Quotes by Alice Sebold

We all work hard to understand the dynamic relationship we have with a parent.

— Alice Sebold

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

— Alice Sebold

“I had wondered if all mothers shared a fear of how vibrant and alive their children were.”

— Alice Sebold

“I knew my mother's limitations because they formed the marrow of my bones.”

— Alice Sebold

“When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily”

— Alice Sebold

Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?

— Alice Sebold

A father's suspicion...' she began. Is as powerful as a mother's intuition.' ~pg 87, Ruana Singh and Jack Salmon

— Alice Sebold

“She was in the downstairs bathroom sneaking bites from the macaroons my father's firm always sent us for Christmas. She ate them…

— Alice Sebold

“We stood-- the dead child and the living --on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him…

— Alice Sebold

You look invincible,' my mother said one night. I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned…

— Alice Sebold

“She had a stare that stretched to infinity. She was, in that moment, not my mother but something separate from me.”

— Alice Sebold

As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I…

— Alice Sebold

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the…

— Alice Sebold

She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths…

— Alice Sebold

“...between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. "That doesn't mean the…

— Alice Sebold

“Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love.…

— Alice Sebold

A lot of people ask questions that they don't want to answer themselves, and if we're honest about the intimacy that we…

— Alice Sebold

“There are secret rooms inside us,” I had said to my therapist. “A relatively benign construct,” he said, and so I did…

— Alice Sebold

Last night it had been my father who had finally said it: "She’s never coming home." A clear and easy piece of…

— Alice Sebold

“For three nights he hadn't known how to touch my mother or what to say. Before, they had never found themselves broken…

— Alice Sebold

There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart…

— Alice Sebold

“Lindsey took my father's hand and watched his face for movement. My sister was growing up before my eyes. I listened as…

— Alice Sebold

“That night my mother had what she considered a wonderful dream. She dreamed of the country of India, where she had never…

— Alice Sebold

“Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched…

— Alice Sebold

“My father was too distracted to see anything in this. Mimicking my mother, he taped it to the fridge in the same…

— Alice Sebold

“On my way home from the junior high, I would sometimes stop at the edge of our property and watch my mother…

— Alice Sebold

It was Buckley, as my father and sister joined the group and listened to Grandma Lynn’s countless toasts, who saw me. He…

— Alice Sebold

“On the flight to Phillidelphia, she sat alone in the middle of a row of three seats. She could not help but…

— Alice Sebold

“My father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on…

— Alice Sebold

“I watched him as he lined up the ships in bottles on his deck, bringing them over from the shelves where they…

— Alice Sebold

“My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey…

— Alice Sebold

“By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr. Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him.…

— Alice Sebold

“She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks…

— Alice Sebold

“He sat down among the evidence at a barren communal desk in the basement of the station. He looked through the stack…

— Alice Sebold

“If I walked too far and wondered loud enough the fields would change. I could look down and see horse corn and…

— Alice Sebold

“Those clothes are Susie's,' my father said calmly when he reached him. Buckley looked down at my blackwatch dress that he held…

— Alice Sebold

“Buckley followed the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?” They…

— Alice Sebold

Hold still," my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised…

— Alice Sebold

His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother…

— Alice Sebold

I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my…

— Alice Sebold